Thursday, March 30, 2017

Paterson
(Adam Driver) is stuck in a rut. By day, the municipal bus driver
repeatedly negotiates his way around a boring route around the New
Jersey city which shares his name. After hours, he hangs out at a
dingy, neighborhood bar where he dutifully limits himself to just one
beer per visit. Then, he heads home to be with his loving wife, Laura
(Golshifteh Farahani), and loyal bulldog, Marvin. Writing
provides Peterson his only escape from the mind-numbing
monotony. Whenever he finds a little free time, he enjoys scribbling
poetry into a secret notebook he always carries around. Laura wants
him to make a copy of the precious journal before it gets lost or
accidentally destroyed.

By
comparison, she's relatively ambitious. Despite her foreign accent
and a lack of musical knowledge, she dreams of becoming a Country
Western singer. So, she's planning to purchase a guitar and to take
lessons they can't really afford. She's lucky that her jaded
husband's just too blase' to complain. Ostensibly
resigned to his fate, unassuming blue-collar hero takes everything in
stride, whether dealing with passengers, unwinding with his wife, or
interacting with the colorful regulars at the local saloon. Thus
unfolds Paterson, the latest offering from the legendary Jim Jarmusch
(Stranger than Paradise).

. The
introspective character portrait relies upon the sort of
dialogue-driven script for which has become a Jarmusch trademark, an
adventure more concerned with character development than with events
of cinematic consequence. Irrepressible Adam Driver tones down his
ordinarily over-the-top act considerably, here, to play the title
role of an undistinguished Average Joe. But
the picture's charm rests in its gifted director's ability to elevate
a humble Everyman into a curiosity worthy of an audience's
contemplation. A minimalist saga serving up an
unsentimental slice of working-class life .

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The Sly Fox Film Reviews

KamWilliams.com

The Sly Fox Film Reviews publishes the content of film critic Kam Williams. Voted Most Outstanding Journalist of the Decade by the Disilgold Soul Literary Review in 2008, Kam Williams is a syndicated film and book critic who writes for 100+ publications around the U.S., Europe, Asia, Africa, Canada and the Caribbean. He is a member of the New York Film Critics Online, the NAACP Image Awards Nominating Committee and Rotten Tomatoes.

In addition to a BA in Black Studies from Cornell, he has an MA in English from Brown, an MBA from The Wharton School, and a JD from Boston University. Kam lives in Princeton, NJ with his wife and son.